


Toxic Support

by FrillyFrills



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Comfort/Angst, Gen, Parental Instinct, Platonic Relationships, Pride, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:22:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24586819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrillyFrills/pseuds/FrillyFrills
Summary: A pretty short drabble for Pride Month where Caustic tries to comfort Wattson after a negative experience. They are both trans cause trans rights yeehaw.
Relationships: Caustic | Alexander Nox/Wattson | Natalie Paquette
Comments: 1
Kudos: 24





	Toxic Support

Caustic would be one of the first to admit that his social skills were rather lacking. To an extent, he saw this as a point of pride. Who was he to voice himself to that of the common drabble, the lab rats? He was a man of science and stood above their respite.

And yet, he despised it in this current moment, as he was now in a position where he needed nothing more than the ability to say the right thing to someone he cared about deeply. 

Caustic paced back and forth outside of Natalie’s room. He stepped hundreds of times now, he could probably bore a path into the metal floor if he continued moving for any longer, and yet, he was entrapped here as he tried to put the words together in his brain.  
“Perhaps I say- No, preposterous. Senseless..” Caustic muttered ideas below his breath, all that were shot down quickly by himself as he struggled to know what to say.  
“ Why must all my intellect exist only in Thanatology?” His hands tightened into fists as he cursed loudly at himself, at traits he once thought exemplar but now saw as liabilities. 

He was wearing casual attire: a lab coat with loose fitting garbs beneath, simplistic in style, born more out of a desire to shorten risks during his work rather than any desire to stand out. A breathing mask tight around his wide face and thin circular glasses worn high on his nose. Every breath he took was heavy and labored as he struggled to fight anxiety and self doubts. 

Caustic swallowed the bile in his throat, he stifled a cough and inhaled deeply to prepare himself.  
“I refuse to be subject to my own pathetic emotions. This is far more important than such petty issues.” 

When he entered the room she was curled up in a ball on her bed, a thick blanket covering her entire body, small whimpers being the only noise in the room besides whispered sniffles and sobs. Everything was dark besides a small lamp in the corner that was stylized to look like a plasma ball, it filled the room with a soft blue glow. 

Caustic gave a forced cough to alert himself to her, though it was hard to not break into actual choking as he did so, be it from the disease in his lungs or his general anxiousness.  
“I apologize profusely for intruding, Ms. Paquette. I just. . . I just assumed you could use the company after what happened earlier.” Sincerity was always an issue with Caustic, he struggled to truly sound sincere, to go anywhere besides professional and scientific. All he could truly do was try his best. 

A light weep came from the bundled mass of blankets as Natalie buried her face deeper into the covers.

Caustic sighed, he moved forward slowly and sat down on the edge of the bed, an quite audial creak from the thin frame being emitted in the process, as he got as close as he felt appropriate.   
“I. . . I must confess that I am not the most appropriate figure to be commenting on spontaneous perturbation. But, even I can express how the asinine behaviors of those banal reporters was extremely inappropriate.” It was hard for anger not to permeate into Caustic’s voice, he found this entire situation ridiculous, so avoidable had the PR representatives running the interviews for Apex vetted the questions to any extent. 

Natalie poked her head out slightly from beneath her covers, tear marks obvious against her lichtenberg figure burned skin as her tangled blonde hair hung down in strands over her downtrodden eyes.  
“I just never thought this would come up again.” She explains, a soft rasp to her dry voice as she spoke in a practical whisper.  
“Papa never told anyone about it, he treated me just as I’d like to be treated. Heh, he was always more interested in my inventions and making sure I didn’t electrocute myself too much instead of questioning anything else.” She had an edge of slight amusement to her voice there, it almost bled over the sadness, though, it was but for a moment as she remembered the events of the day prior.   
“No one could have possibly just known. They’d have to have looked for it. I just- I don’t get why they’d care, why anyone would care that the Electrical Engineer might not have been the same person when she was younger. I came here to fight, to feel like I belong. Not- not to be- not to be judged like that.” Natalie’s voice waved as she talked, a slight crack to the tone as she tried to keep it together, a task that she found herself failing as she laid there, her face in a deep frown. 

Caustic mentally buried a wide variety of varying, violent revenge scenarios involving tabloid journalists and a large amount of flesh eating chemical gas as he instead focused on the task at hand, the thing that mattered so much more to him. From next to her, he rested one of his large hands on her shoulder, mimicking what he imagined should be a comforting gesture as he used all the energy he could have used for violent fantasies to instead help the girl who meant more to him than anything else.  
“They’re nothing but mud-slinging slanderous imbeciles. They care about nothing more than what disparaging excuse for journalism they can create with what few brain cells they can rub together. You. . . You didn’t deserve such treatment, Ms. Paquette. Someone of your intellect and potential deserves far better.” Caustic’s voice ranged from malice to pride as he told her his thoughts, he didn’t know if he was helping, or if he truly could help, but he knew that if anyone had something to say here, it would be him.  
“If I may be truthful, for a moment. I was in a similar position to yours when I was in my adolescence.” He had never told anyone this before, he certainly never thought it would ever come out. And yet, he finally found someone who might understand him exactly, just as much as he could understand her.   
“Everyday it felt as if I was fundamentally flawed in some way, that I was repugnant and could never change it. I assumed that realizing who I truly desired to be would be the end of my dilemmas, but it seemed as if my ambitions became a point of hatred for those with more anger than sense. In time, their bitten words grew to only make the ones I would sling at myself far more potent.” Caustic dragged a hand to his chest as he talked, he felt the space on his upper torso, flat against his stroke, the only real mass being that of his weight.  
“What occurred that helped me truly except myself was realizing that their words only truly had as much power as I approved them to have. As I grew older, I realized the power of my self actualization. To see their words as anything to believe would be under the assumption they had anything of value to ever speak to begin with. And I. . . well, we, have far more that puts us over them than anything they could ever claim otherwise.” As he finished, his tone defiant, he feared that he had made a mistake in ever trying to say anything. But, his fears seemed to vanish in a half-second as Natalie poked her head out even further, her eyes looking up at him in a hopeful expression.  
“So we’re in this together?” She asks in a hopeful voice, so hopeful that Caustic had little he could do to avoid saying exactly what he knew needed to be said, even if a part of him was highly reluctant to do so:  
“Of course, Ms. Paquette. We in, *sigh*, “Team Science”, must persist together.” Caustic swallowed what little dignity he had left in that moment as Natalie broke into a series of hard snickers, she giggled so hard you’d swear she had just made a bad electricity pun.   
“Hehe. Agreed! Team Science is unstoppable together!” A fair degree of her electric vigor seemed to return in that moment, a vigor that seemed to motivate her to dig her way out of her blanket cocoon and break past Caustic’s unprepared defenses to yank the older scientist into a tight hug.   
“Thank you so much for the kind words, Dr. Caustic.” 

Under any other situation, he would want out of this as fast as he could afford.

But, perhaps just this once, he was willing to make an exception.  
“I’ve noted your appreciation.”


End file.
